This invention relates to a mechanism in a safety seat belt buckle to provide a positive and unambiguous ejection of the clip from the buckle once the uncouple release mechanism is actuated.
Most safety seat belt buckles in passenger automobiles provide a finger actuated lever as an uncoupling mechanism. When depressed, the lever removes the latch from the clip opening thereby permitting the clip to be removed from the buckle. Unless the user immediately pulls the clip out or unless there is an eject mechanism that automatically moves the clip away from the latch, the buckle will recouple when pressure on the lever is released.
It is inconvenient to the user to have to remember to pull out the clip and can have an adverse impact on the user's willingness to buckle up. Accordingly, it is one of the purposes of this invention to provide a simple and effective eject mechanism for automatically ejecting the clip from the buckle when the release lever is depressed.
Although eject mechanisms are known and certainly have been suggested, the known eject mechanisms create problems of inconvenience that match or outweigh the convenience provided. For example, it is important that the eject mechanism avoid significantly increasing the resistance to insertion of the clip into the buckle when buckling up. It is also important that the eject mechanism avoid increasing the bulkiness of the buckle.
Accordingly, it is a further purpose of this invention to provide an eject mechanism which provides a net convenience to the user and avoids creating conditions that tend to discourage ready and regular use of a safety seat belt by a driver and passenger.
Because of the enormous volume of seat belts used, any additional feature which adds to the cost of the seat belt will result in a significant total cost. Thus, it is important and it is a purpose of this invention to provide an eject mechanism which is of minimum cost and which can be assembled in the seat belt readily and automatically without requiring additional hand labor.
It is another purpose of this invention to provide an eject mechanism of such a nature that if the ejector fails, the failure will not affect the ability of the user to use and to have an effective seat belt. In general, it is essential that the eject mechanism and the convenience it provides not mitigate against safety.
An eject mechanism may not be used uniformly throughout the industry. Therefore, cost considerations make it important that a standard or uniform part be used on as many seat belt buckles as possible. Accordingly, it is another purpose of this invention to provide an eject mechanism which can be either incorporated in or left out of a standard seat belt buckle design without requiring a change of any part other than the deletion of the critical eject mechanism parts.